Shortly before Capitol Hill got down to brass tacks on President Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the spending proposal came under blistering criticism in separate critiques by mainline Protestant leaders and the head of Catholic Charities USA. The nation’s most vulnerable, namely the poor, stand to suffer because of $214 billion in domestic spending cuts while wealthy Americans will benefit from tax breaks, said the church leaders. The president, who once said his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ, has proposed a budget that “takes Jesus’ teaching on economic justice and stands it on its head,” Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church said on behalf of five mainline churches. They recalled from the Gospel of Luke the story of a poor man, Lazarus, lying at the gate of a rich man who ignores the poor man’s plight. Upon death, Lazarus goes to heaven, the rich man to hell. In a letter to Congress, Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities, charged that Bush is attempting to rein in a growing deficit by cutting domestic programs for the poor. “At a time when the United States is spending more on defense and homeland security, a question arises about who will pay for it,” Snyder said. “It should not be our nation’s poorest citizens.” [more]